Winters in May, Summers in December
by lotuskasumi
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr: Whouffaldi - "Oops, did I do that?.. Oh well." She likes to imagine she's the deciding word on all things impossible, but the Doctor is known to be able to surprise her. And he does. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara. M for suggestive content.)


"These are brand new!" Clara fumed.

"Were they?" he asked.

"_Were _new," Clara amended with a sigh, half frustrated, but more than a little pleased at the path of his hands scorching along her body. _More than a little _became _perhaps a bit too much_ as she savored the feeling of his fingers sliding over her thighs, and down around the sensitive bend of her knees, taking her (now ripped) stockings down with him. "And they were my favorite," she added, too full of pride to pout.

A muffled reply came back, almost lost in the heat he was building at her neck: a fire ignited by his breath and kisses and teeth. She caught the end of it: "_Oops… Oh well."_

Not a sincere apology whatsoever, that much was clear, but when she bent her head to catch his eye and kiss him back in earnest, she saw the smirk playing about his lips. It was a dark smile, a fierce thing that warmed her utterly and made her weak in all the places he was tending to at present. It was the only smile he ever showed now, pure and honest and solely _his _to share with only _her._

_Ours, then. _Clara wasn't in the habit of saying that. Plurals were an oddity when it came to her life with the Doctor. Introductions were always a separate affair. _Clara and this is the Doctor. This is Clara, she's my — carer, companion, friend, partner. _The last had been almost a confession, a startling quake that nearly ruptured the ground on which she stood when it came to her life with the Doctor.

_Our life, _she corrected in silence.

His nonchalance in that present moment was catching. Clara could have laughed, decided she would not, but a giggle came out all the same when his hands began to move up her thighs again. Such a feather light touch, gentle when so much about him was not. He was impossibly like that now, all rough edges and prickly corners with a set of pale, pretty eyes, and two bleeding hearts in a body that seemed born to bend to her touch — and perhaps he was. It couldn't hurt to think of something impossible like that, not when she was a walking example of the damned word. And that went double for him as well: two hearts, with two lives more than what she thought he had in him. She didn't know how their biology worked, didn't even know where to begin trying to understand his, but perhaps there was something to the late night lonely thought that even if she did not know who the Doctor _was_, not always, she at least knew who he was meant _for_.

"Clara," he whispered against her lips, his fingers now in her hair and the other hand moving up and under her blouse to her breasts. "Clara, _Clara_…" Deft hands, with a somewhat more insistent touch. As if he were answering her thoughts with more than just words.

Could he do that? Would he continue to? Clara tried to think of how to tell him not to stop.

She must have said it, traitor tongue acting against her, because he was saying: "I had no intention. You'd have to make me — but you won't, will you?" And he was smirking again, one hand up under her skirt and the other cupping a breast.

Ahh, so he knew now, how dearly she ached and craved all these desperate, dark, intense parts of him. She had no choice now.

The heels of Clara's hands found his shoulders and gave him a light shove, but his arms wound so quickly around her, lifting her gently so that she was where he'd begun. Now she was on top, with her lips at his throat offering kisses and muffled, not entirely gentle words to the languid air settling throughout her bedroom.

Clara ran her fingers around the collar she left more than a few lipstick smudges on in the past. He positively writhed at the touch, but it was different from their earlier embraces, purely awkward affairs he would squirm out of as quickly as possible. This was a different kind of innate, blood-hot response. He'd done it before, and she'd drawn such hisses and sighs out of him before, but she loved it like new every time.

A bonfire grew in her body, matching the parts pressed flush against him like a summer to burn through the winter that hadn't quite passed in the world outside, but it was the two of them here, right here, inside and safe that mattered most. Time was of no consequence when they fell into and against each other with such foolish, heartfelt, heated disarray, as if both were wordlessly determined to melt the ice that could freeze her heart in place when she caught his gaze in the corner of her own: heavy and cold, a frozen, frigid thing that would only thaw in the light of her presence. Together they would burn, together they would smolder only to once again freeze, then spark up blazing bright all over again.

That was how the seasons of their lives went, together, as one. That was how the seasons of their love went.

The word chilled her, the way her skin could feel so bare and new and scared when her clothes were gone and all that could cover her were his lips, warming her with tender, murmuring kisses.

"Don't make this into a habit, Doctor," Clara told him, those kisses in mind as she sat astride him, her buttons undone and her bra unhooked — how had he managed that? How could she not have felt it?

His hands were on her hips to support and cling and balance and claw in loving, aching turns. The Doctor scowled at her words, but did nothing more. Clara reached forward to undo the buttons on his shirt, returning the favor back to him, ignoring the cut to his gaze and the way he rose to meet every little shift she made with her hips, their bodies moving in sync even if their thoughts often could not.

"You once called me a hobby, if I remember correctly," he reminded her, his voice low and warm, like a tear slipping into her heart.

"You are," she said, ignoring his little angry huff when she pulled his shirt out from the band of his trousers, a frustrated sound that became a wordless, far more pleasing grunt and moan when her hands shifted lower for just a moment, just long enough to make his eyes tighten and his gaze burn hot. "You were," she corrected, giving him own last rub before she pulled her shirt off and took the bra with it. A scandalously silver-studded, red and black thing they both loved dearly. She'd greeted him once wearing that and a matching garter set. She'd never seen him kneel faster.

The Doctor would not ask what he was to her now — he would not say anything next, now that so little stood between them. It was a hushed reverence, this silence of his, a sort of intense, focused calmed that Clara had marveled at in the first few times they met this way. How uneasy they'd been back then, fumbling yet furiously sure of what they wanted, but far from certain on how to obtain it without showing how weak their desires had made them. Those mad dances of passion would make Clara flush to think of in the morning after. How could he could linger in her skin and in her thoughts so long after partaking of one, and seemingly reading the other? It was another impossible, miraculous thing.

He would not ask what he was to her now — so Clara would show him, the way she always did when they met this way, skin to skin and heart to hearts, every wound laid bare for the other to cherish, tend to, and through love try to mend.

—

Later, in the sea-shell curve of her ear, drawing her halfway out of sleep and thus ensuring a truthful answer, his voice said: "What did you mean, _'Don't make this into a habit'_?"

Clara sighed and nestled closer to his side, listening to the sound of his hearts beat out of time with her one lonely own. "You're not my hobby. I'm not your habit. We're like seasons, instead."

"Seasons?" he asked, confused, amused, but curious — so like every Doctor she ever knew.

Drawn out from a dream full of golden stars and pale blue pretty eyes peering into her own from the cradle of a warm, waiting dark, Clara kissed her Doctor's cheek and jaw and chin. She opened her tired eyes to find his gaze, shining bright and starry eyed, and smiled as she said, "We'll always blend together, even though we're opposites."

"… Not sure I follow." It wasn't an embarrassed admission, just an honest one.

Clara shrugged as she lowered herself back down to the bed, to his arms, and to another chance at rest. "What do the seasons do?" she asked, after a pause.

"Change," he said at once.

"Slowly merge," she corrected gently. "Spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter, only it's bit by bit over the year. A gradual process."

"Is that a veiled criticism of some kind?"

"It's food for thought, Doctor." She hid her yawn in his shoulder.

His lips were in her hair when he asked, "What am I then, Clara?"

Hadn't she shown him? She thought she had. Her heart trembled, until she lifted her eyes to his own and saw that he knew the answer: he asked _because_ he knew it, because he wanted the pleasure of hearing her say it.

Clara kissed him. She kissed him again. "You're a summer for sure."

"No old man winter comparisons? That's very generous."

She would not ask what she was to him — she didn't have to. Because in the corner of her heart that was home to his terror and tears, all those fears he once kept secret from her, Clara could hear the answer ringing true. She was every season and none at once — she was the year, every year, every notch of passing time. Vital and treasured, a steady constant.

An impossible sentiment, indeed. Except, perhaps, for a Time Lord.


End file.
